Meditation, Thoughts & Emotions

     After years of serious meditation practice, many of us expect to reach a stable state of equanimity, if not pure bliss. When this doesn't happen, we wonder if we've messed up somehow.
     Thoughts, emotions & body sensations will always continue to change (anicca), and will continue, at times, to be unpleasant (dukkha). However, self-inquiry & meditative experience tells us that these things are not who / what we are (anatta). 
     It takes a LOT of wise, continuous practice - on AND off the cushion - to let go of being so thoroughly identified with our thoughts (self-referential internal narrative), emotions & body, and start to hold ourselves much more lightly.
     A few Buddhist perspectives on this common dilemma:

     “The meditator’s path is not about trying to become perfect. It is a path that leads to inner freedom. I have found meditators to be some of the most idealistic people in the world. It makes sense that we would be; after all, we are aiming for the highest happiness. But when idealism is self-centered – as in ‘I’ have to be perfect – it is debilitating and exhausting, certainly for ourselves but also for those around us upon whom we are projecting our need for perfection. As the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki reminds us, practice is making one mistake after another. 
     … Aiming for perfection can be seductive and compelling. Given that the society in which we live supports the idea that perfection is attainable, it can feel like our own personal fault if we are not.” 
       Narayan Helen Liebenson. “The Magnanimous Heart. Compassion and Love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation.” Wisdom Publications, 2018.

     When practitioners complain about suffering, Zen teachers would ask them: "WHO is suffering?" The intention is to nudge the practitioner toward the direct experience of not being able to find any trace of a solid, fixed, unchanging "I". 
     If we ask ourselves this question, we immediately leave the victim role, and assume an observer role, which is MUCH more spacious, free & clear.
 
     “The fundamental change, the turning of the page from illusion to clarity and understanding in my process of nondual awakening, occurred after many, many hours of self-inquiry and yoga while working with ‘I am not this body’ and ‘Am I this body?’ …” 
       Gary Weber. “Evolving Beyond Thought. Updating Your Brain’s Software.” CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.

     For a deeper insight into this essential topic: 
• Guy Armstrong. “Emptiness. A Practical Guide for Meditators.” Wisdom Publications, 2017. 
• Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. “Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree. The Buddha’s Teachings on Voidness.” Wisdom Publications, 1994.

Morning meditation

Real Life is NOT "Picture-perfect"

     “When I was twenty-four I had a flash of insight: that this was in fact my life, this is exactly what it looked like and presumably always would. That one’s studies, this fabled and much-talked-about period in life, on which one always looked back with pleasure, were for me no more than a series of dismal, lonely and imperfect days. That I had not seen this before was due to the constant hope I carried around inside me, all the ridiculous dreams with which a twenty-year-old can be burdened, about women and love, about friends and happiness, about hidden talents and sudden breakthroughs. But when I was twenty-four I saw life as it was. And it was OK …” 
       Karl Ove Knausgaard. “A Death in the Family. My Struggle: Book 1.” Vintage Books, London, 2014. 

     So, is Knausgaard depressed, pessimistic, cynical, temporarily "down" - OR - is he seeing life as it actually is, far different than our common hopes and dreams? Don't we keep hoping for life to transform into one continuous glorious beer commercial? And don't we repeatedly feel disappointed because our life is "so damned ordinary"? For Freud, "ordinary unhappiness" was the best he could hope for, the goal of psychotherapy.
     In 500 BCE, the Buddha understood deeply the stressful unsatisfactoriness that (unawakened) life entails, even though he was born healthy, intelligent, wealthy - a handsome prince, with everything the world could provide at his fingertips.

      “Dukkha (refers to) stress, suffering, misery, unsatisfactoriness, pain: literally, ‘hard to endure, difficult to bear.’ 
     In its limited sense, dukkha is the quality of experience that results when the mind is conditioned by avijja into craving, attachment, egoism, and selfishness. This feeling takes on forms such as disappointment, dissatisfaction, frustration, agitation, anguish, dis-ease, despair – from the crudest to the subtlest levels. 
     In its universal sense, dukkha is the inherent condition of unsatisfactoriness, ugliness, and misery in all impermanent, conditioned things (sankhara). This second fundamental characteristic is the result of anicca; impermanent things cannot satisfy our wants and desires no matter how hard we try (and cry). The inherent decay and dissolution of things is misery.”
       Buddhadasa Bhikkhu. “Mindfulness with Breathing. A Manual for Serious Beginners.” Wisdom Publications, Boston, 1988. 

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS, Canada

Sunnata - Voidness, Emptiness

     "Sunnata doesn't mean 'nothing' or 'nothingness'; it means void of atta (self).

     Nothing whatsoever should be clung to as 'I' or 'mine'.

     ... in the sphere of the Buddhist teachings ... there are the questions, 'Is there dukkha?' and 'How can it be quenched?' Knowing the root cause of dukkha, one will be able to extinguish it. And that root cause of dukkha is the delusion, the wrong understanding, that there is 'I' and 'mine'."

Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree - The Buddha's Teachings on Voidness 
by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Wisdom, 1994
http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/heartwood-bodhi-tree

 

On Reflection

Fundamental Principles of Buddhism

     "To call something a 'fundamental principle of Buddhism' is only correct if,
          first, it is a principle that aims at the quenching of dukkha (pain, misery, suffering) and, 
          second, it has a logic that one can see for oneself without having to believe others."

Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree - The Buddha's Teachings on Voidness
by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Wisdom, 1994 
http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/heartwood-bodhi-tree

 

Eagle Lake

Unentangling from "Me, Myself & I"

     "... the 'heartwood,' the pith, the essence of the Buddhist teachings is the practice of non-clinging. It is living with a mind void of the feelings of 'I' and 'mine'.
     When we (take voidness as our fundamental principle), we have a wonderful tool for understanding and making use of every one of the many concepts and skillful means that lie within the Buddhist tradition."

Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree - The Buddha's Teachings on Voidness 
by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, Wisdom, 1994
http://www.wisdompubs.org/book/heartwood-bodhi-tree

Sky in Eagle Lake